Officials Amp Up Spying Defense

Security Chief Says Surveillance Foiled More Than 50 Plots

By

Siobhan Gorman and

Siobhan Hughes

Updated June 19, 2013 2:42 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON—The director of the National Security Agency on Tuesday mounted his most vigorous defense of two controversial data-surveillance programs, saying they helped thwart more than 50 terror plots and contending the agency might have been able to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had it had such capabilities.

Testifying before a mostly receptive House Intelligence Committee, Gen. Keith Alexander, flanked by four other top government officials, said the programs have helped the U.S. stave off another major attack on its soil. He and his colleagues disclosed two new examples of known terrorist plots they said were disrupted by the programs, including an attack on the New York Stock Exchange.

ENLARGE

Gen. Keith Alexander, NSA director, center in uniform, told a House panel that data-surveillance programs help the U.S. stave off major attacks.
Associated Press

He also repeatedly described the surveillance programs as rigorously overseen by various branches of the government.

FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce testifies before a house committee on surveillance leaks, and details terrorist plots prevented by the NSA.

The comments came at a hastily arranged hearing at which lawmakers and intelligence officials tried to reframe the debate over government surveillance that exploded in the days since former contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the two NSA programs. One collects phone-call records from millions of Americans, and another, called Prism, uses U.S. Internet companies to intercept foreign communications. On Tuesday, Google Inc. asked a secret surveillance court for permission to say more about its involvement in Prism.

The House hearing provided a rebuttal to Mr. Snowden, who is believed to be in Hong Kong and has expanded on his disclosures in recent days. On Monday, he held an online chat in which he said President Barack Obama had "deepened and expanded several abusive programs."

More

Gen. Alexander cast the alternative as risking more terrorist attacks. "I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11," he said. "In the 12 years since the attacks on September 11th, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) opened the hearing by blasting the leaks, saying they had painted an "inaccurate picture" and fostered "mistrust in government."

"It is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside," he said.

While some lawmakers posed skeptical questions, the hearing largely provided a friendly forum for the government, with both Mr. Rogers and his Democratic counterpart, Maryland Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, praising the work of the NSA.

Critics of the agency's programs said the hearing failed to adequately probe them.

"This hearing isn't a fact-finding mission, it's a PR stunt," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's clear that leadership of the intelligence committees consider themselves part of the intelligence community, not an independent body tasked with its oversight."

Gen. Alexander also revealed the extent to which NSA's systems may be vulnerable to technicians misusing their access as so-called systems administrators, the position Mr. Snowden held. He said NSA has roughly 1,000 such positions and that most of them are held by contractors. He said he didn't yet know how Mr. Snowden had gained access to such sensitive programs.

The precise value of these programs in thwarting the 50 attacks identified by Gen. Alexander remains unclear. Later in the hearing, he said the ability to review phone records played a key role in about 10 of those cases, with the ability to track Internet communications from foreigners abroad—an NSA program more in line with its traditional mission—proving critical in about half of the 50 cases.

Sean Joyce, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, described at the hearing the two newly disclosed examples of how the programs helped foil attacks, including one instance in which the FBI was able to detect and disrupt a nascent plot to bomb the NYSE and arrest the individuals on lesser charges.

In that case, Mr. Joyce said, agents were able to identify a man in Kansas City, Mo., who was talking to extremists in Yemen, ultimately arresting him. They were also able to lure two other suspects to the U.S. who they believed were involved in the plot, officials said. All three suspects are awaiting sentencing for lesser crimes.

The second example concerned a 2007 terrorism-financing case involving the al Qaeda offshoot in Somalia known as al-Shabaab, a law-enforcement official said. Mr. Joyce described that case more obliquely in the hearing.

Earlier, officials had said the programs had helped thwart a 2009 New York subway bombing plot and another plot that year against a Danish newspaper.

Amid the support for the programs, a smaller group of lawmakers questioned the scope and extent of the techniques.

"This is historically unprecedented in the extent of the data that is being collected on potentially all American citizens," said Rep. Jim Himes (D., Conn.). "We know that when a capability exists, there's a potential for abuse." Could someone have tracked calls made by the congressman from a bar in the early hours, he asked.

Gen. Alexander said under the phone-records program, analysts would be barred from analyzing that kind of information and would be caught. He didn't say whether a rogue analyst would be able to perform such a search, and in an interview later, Mr. Himes said he didn't think the officials provided an adequate explanation of the centrality of the phone-records program to terrorism cases.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) proposed overhauling the phone-records program so that the data resides at the phone companies and the NSA assesses it, rather than the NSA housing all the data.

Gen. Alexander said the NSA would consider the proposal but raised the concern that it would be slower if the government had to ask phone companies for permission to query, or look at, their data. "The concern is speed in crisis," he said.

At the hearing, Gen. Alexander and other officials sought to put numbers behind their contention that the programs are tightly overseen, saying that 22 people at NSA are authorized to approve the numbers involved in querying the phone-records database. Only 10 officials at NSA are authorized to disseminate information about people in the U.S. to the rest of the government, he said.

Legislation to alter the NSA programs is unlikely for now. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) has postponed consideration of an annual intelligence bill to avoid inviting amendments that would change the program, a senior Republican congressional aide said.

The speaker is facing pressure from his right flank. "The American people deserve to have a vote to put members on record on whether they support this metadata collection," said Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), the co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus. "I'm going to vote no." Mr. Barton said his bloc is hoping to met with Mr. Boehner over the surveillance programs.

In the Senate, a senior aide said a vote on a surveillance bill was also unlikely there because the issue splits Democrats.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.